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Paradise Now: The unfamiliar perspective of Ryan Koopmans

Ryan Koopmans

Documentary photographer

Documentary photographer Ryan Koopmans was born in Amsterdam and raised in Vancouver. He continues to travel in pursuit of photographic work that focuses largely on architecture, urban planning, and the built environment of megacities. Koopmans’ perspective is recognisable; an oblique vantage point where the scale of the world’s megacities shifts between sheer enormity, and that of a rendered model. He shared further insight – as well as his fantastical series Paradise Now – with AHB.

When did you start photographing? When I was applying to study a Masters of Architecture, a component of my portfolio involved making pictures. After a few months of shooting, my trajectory changed and I fell in love with photography. Instead I applied to an MFA in Photography Video + Related Media at The School of Visual Arts in New York City, from where I graduated in 2012. The immediacy of the photographic medium, immersion into the present moment, freedom to travel, and being self-employed, is what attracted me to both the art and profession.

I traveled before I was a photographer, but didn’t make pictures. Now a camera is always with me.

How does travel / adventure impact your art and your perspective? Has travel always been a big part of your life? Travel is an integral part of my practice, and I spend the majority of the year on the road. However, I have a studio in Amsterdam where I edit, research, and recharge before going back out for assignments or personal work. I traveled before I was a photographer, but didn’t make pictures. Now a camera is always with me. Adventure is what motivates me to get into unfamiliar situations and environments, exert a lot of energy and resources, and return with a developed sense of discovery, knowledge and hopefully strong images.

Interchange, Shanghai, China Photographed through the spherical glass floor of the Oriental Pearl Tower, an enormous roundabout functions as ornament and traffic control in the financial heart of Shanghai.

If your work has a central or common theme, what is it? It has developed from what I am most interested in. I am drawn to surreal structures in our manufactured landscapes, and the way societies have built up enormous cities and settlements in what was once a natural environment. Formal aesthetic qualities such as geometry, repetition and saturation aid me in illustrating the poetry of form in these fantastical places. A range of art and artists inspire me. From the geometric patterns of a mosque ceiling, to ‘wildstyle’ graffiti with its intricate patterns and colour, to the surreal complexity of drawings by M.C Escher, I’m influenced/referencing fine art more and more in my work.

Somewhere just above the height of a building but below the elevation of a helicopter is the sweet spot.

Ophelia, The Hague, Netherlands A deer lays frozen in the irrigation dyke of a golf course near a newly developed neighborhood in The Hague.

Why do you seek that vantage point – and can you describe the kind of angle or height you seek? Ideally I like to shoot from a perspective that isn’t familiar or overly visualized. Somewhere just above the height of a building but below the elevation of a helicopter is the sweet spot. I try to create an uncanny sense of suspension by cutting out the horizon line, and flattening/compressing the frame.

Supertrees, Marina South Gardens, Singapore Gargantuan synthetic tree-like structures line Singapore’s manmade marina and serve as vertical gardens of exotic plant life. Connected by elevated walkways, the 25 to 40 metre-high Supertrees are fitted with environmental technologies that mimic the ecological functions of real trees, including solar cells that harness energy from sunlight and irrigation systems for collecting rainwater.

Happy Valley, Shenzhen, China Pedestrians stroll through the gates of ‘Shangri-la Woods’ in Shenzhen Happy Valley theme park, which is notorious for accidents both on and around its 213-acres of attractions.

What are you favourite cities, in terms of photographing them and otherwise? There is a difference between where I like to shoot, and where I actually go to enjoy myself. However, 99% of the time I am only somewhere to produce pictures. That being said, Astana in Kazakhstan, large cities in central China, and the entire former Soviet Union have been some of my favourite places to work.

Thames Town, Songjiang, China A scale model of Songjiang New City sprawls across the floor of the Urban Planning Museum in Thames Town, Songjiang. Modelled after traditional British market villages, Thames Town is part of Shanghai’s ‘One City, Nine Towns’ urban planning initiative to alleviate inner city congestion.

Especially when viewing Supertrees, I get the idea that Paradise Now is a comment on a futuristic or dystopic garden of Eden. Is this far off the mark? Paradise Now began as somewhat of a naïve curiosity in the world’s mega and planned cities. What my final comment or position on the matter is, I am still exploring, as it’s a complex one. Singapore’s ‘Supertrees’ are particularly paradoxical in that the natural forest was removed, but the gargantuan structures introduced, actually function similar to trees. Solar panels produce energy like leaves, rainwater is controlled through the structural irrigation, and native foliage has been encouraged to grow back organically. Therefore ‘Supertrees’ is not just an ecologically destructive intervention, but functions as an artificially improved appropriation of what existed before. Singapore is a planned city where greenery and sustainability have been at the core of its development. This is unlike most other places where rapid building and high-rise sprawl have been largely destructive and ignorant to what existed there indigenously. It all may appear futuristic, but is in fact very contemporary. If anything, it is slightly dated as much of that work was produced up to 4 years ago now.

A common reaction to these photographs is ‘wow, that’s crazy, where is that?’, but in a virtually connected world, discovering places that no one has seen has become increasingly challenging.

Spread, Jiangsu, China Standardized villas packed side-by-side form the two thousand-member socialist collective of Huaxi Village in rural Eastern China.

Further to that – the openness of visual communication is interesting for both artist and audience. Do you want to communicate a specific commentary of the situations you photograph? My driving force is to discover places and creations that I personally find intriguing. As for what I’m trying to communicate to an audience, it is a more focused critical perspective, something that I will develop over time. A common reaction to these photographs is ‘wow, that’s crazy, where is that?’, but in a virtually connected world, discovering places that no one has seen has become increasingly challenging. I am still in the stages of researching and observing all that is unfolding, some of which is obviously negative but some very necessary, as populations grow and natural resources dwindle. I was in Seoul when the Dongdaemun Design Plaza was unveiled, a big mean jellybean in the middle of the largest shopping district. Seoul’s massive development in the late 1900s seemed to greatly affect the style of architecture. What do building like these symbolize? I struggle actually calling them just buildings – they’re more like hubs or precincts. In my opinion, many designs like the one you’ve mentioned, function as cultural markers of economic success and/or symbols of national identity. Additionally, they are exercises in computer-generated technologies, trying to push the boundaries of engineering, physics, and construction. Although highly functional as ‘buildings’ serving a utilitarian purpose, their intention and that of those who commission them, involves a myriad of meanings and objectives.

What am I looking at here? This is a detail of a disk-toss game at Joyland in Changzhou, China. Joyland is a computer themed park that merges digital entertainment in a built environment with the real world. It is abstractly based on storylines and images from the videogames World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo, all in violation of American copyright law. I sometimes shoot details of graphics/renderings in addition to the actual buildings and urban plans themselves, then mix the images when sequencing, as was the case in Paradise Now.

Princess Amalia, North Sea, Netherlands

Wind turbines from Princess Amalia Wind Farm off the Dutch coast in the North Sea seen from above.

What are you working on now? How does it draw from Paradise Now? I continue to create work in the same vein as Paradise Now, focusing on similar concepts of surreal constructions and rapid environmental transformation. Additionally, over the last several years I have covered several global events and keep busy with editorial/commercial assignments. Ultimately though, the focus is to build on the themes introduced in Paradise Now. I plan to release a second version in 2016, as well as introduce sculptures along side large-scale prints when exhibiting.

It seems to me that this is the golden age of amateur photography. How do professionals, that is those who are committed documentary, editorial, photojournalists, how do we go about telling stories that are convincing and compelling in a visually saturated environment?

National Geographic photographer Sam Abell has defined his career with patience. There is no dull section of a Sam Abell photograph, the frame is layered from back to front with compelling imagery. This can be a slow process, it can take days, weeks, or in some cases months for the right opportunity to present itself.

There were many rafts over the course of the four years and all were built with salvaged materials. The construction boom happening in NYC in the mid-2000s provided a lot of scrap material that we pulled from dumpsters.

I love the unexpected, uncontrollable moments that just happen. That’s why I suppose spontaneity is really the crux of the best art I’ve done. That, and I just really love the process of making things.

There are countless stories that tell of a young man, lost and uncertain, who sets out on a whirlwind adventure and figures out who he really is. It is a sad reality that amongst the great classic adventure stories, very few (if any) of the protagonists are female.

I perceive my photographic work through a director’s eyes, however, the difference in my vision, is that the whole world is a stage. It’s an intense sensation of “limitless”. I like to recreate a fantastic universe of dreams and travels.

Arriving back in Marrakech, I felt like I had truly been to outer space and back; I felt like I had seen landscapes that could not exist on our planet. I felt like I had stepped both back and out of time and had seen and briefly experienced a different way of living, of one without time and without fear.

Photography is a fiction. It’s a frame of a film which hasn’t been made, or a line from a forgotten poem. I always create in camera as much as possible, because it is also about the experience of what is in front of you at the time.

It’s surprising to see a lot of people’s living spaces of a certain age – what they surround themselves with and how they decorate their houses. They’re like living museums. It’s often an incredible level of chaos and madness that they live amongst

I use that same word when I talk about travel – luxury. It’s such a white man’s headache you know, like, it’s not hard. People say “How did you do that? That’s so hard.” And I think, “Well there are some cold days, some warm days, you know..” But it’s my own choice, and it’s a privilege entirely.

Porter Yates is a photographer, and Dan Melamid is a director. They have been friends for many years, and both share a passion for travel and visual storytelling. Through Witness.Earth they have collaborated to develop a new style of photographic presentation to music.

Thematically, (Katrin’s) work is concerned with ideas of Australian regional and remote communities in socio-economic transition in the 21st century; experientially, it is an exploration of photographer’s familiarity with her new home country.

Wild & Precious brings together treasures from a series of road trips travelled over 5 years by photographer Jesse Burke and his daughter Clover. It’s a reminder that exploration is timeless, and infinite, as should be the wild.

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the ocean, and I think a large part of my focus in documenting it focuses on my curiosity and admiration for it… I’ve been circled by bullsharks, thrown over the falls at Teahupoo, ravaged by swarms of sea lice, bounced off the reef at Pipeline, had a jet ski thrown over my head in Australia…

While cycling about in remote South Australia Tom was bitten on the neck by a reback spider and, after suffering through the night, made it to hospital the following day to be dosed up on two bags of anti-venom. Another time, while hiking Tasmania’s magnificent Overland Track through constant rainfall, a leech found its way quietly into his mouth.

At the age of 22, Larry Niehues packed his bags and headed to Mcallen in south Texas. Following the footsteps of Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston and Dennis Hopper, he embarked on his own great American road trip.

I struggle a little bit with my attraction to old things, but I like small towns and they are usually a little behind the times. At least landscapes are timeless. I can’t be accused of nostalgia when photographing nature.

Creativity runs through your veins. Photography is just a way to capture what you need to express. You see something that moves you, it doesn’t necessarily have to be beautiful, and you take a picture of it. Creativity is tied to anything that makes you tick. In my case it is the outdoors.

Ittoqqortoormiit is one of the most insulated towns in the world. Far away from all touristic highways and only accessible by helicopter. Two supply ships a year, and if you forget to lodge a request you must wait six more months for this.

I try to approach these trips and films with an open mind as to what I might find. I think its really important to spend time with the people, and let them tell you about what they would like to tell you before filming them or attempting to interview them.

Maybe in some of these places there has never been human presence, I access them with my kayak or by boat. Sometimes I’m lucky, and I go alone, sometimes I go with my groups. Either way I’m very lucky, I can see other worlds within this world. I’m very lucky to experience this.

We want to make people aware about how difficult the living and working conditions in certain parts of the world can be, the fact that not everybody was born into the bright side of life but also that travelling to far away places is possible – through photographs.

The Family Acid sounds something like an adult swim cartoon, but the truth is so much more awesome. They are in fact responsible for some of the most visually intriguing and detailed documentation of the counter cultural movement of the 1970’s on, out of the U.S and beyond.

That was a life changing time with two wonderful women and their amazing father who are dear friends of mine. They are sailors but it was a first for me to be out at sea for two weeks. The best way to explore any coast on a magic carpet ride!

It was an amazing, incredible sight to see hundreds of people on this beach. The horses went in first, four or five horses into the water, then the saints were immersed, and then everybody else went in after that to take the ritual bath.

I make an effort to let everyone I photograph know what I’m up to. I want them to understand where I am coming from. I think when they meet me they realise I’m not out to expose or judge them. Who am I to expose something or someone anyway?

This series is the first time I’ve ventured into photojournalism. The opportunity fell into place; I happened to be at the right place at the right time. I wasn’t prepared for the evident increase in poaching and anti-poaching activity this time around, and that was a shock. It’s a strange series to reflect on.